Have You Noticed?

On October 31st world leaders and negotiators will meet in Glasgow, Scotland to discuss the fate of the world in relation to climate change. This meeting COP_26 is the 26th Conference of Parties to UNFCCC (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) which was agreed to in 1992 setting rules and expectations for global co-operation to manage climate change. Some believe we have left it too late while others predict that while we still have time to make the fundamental changes, agreement will not be forthcoming.

The fractures in our own country and around the world are difficult to comprehend given that the UN Intergovernmental Panel August 2021 report states that ‘’human activities have unequivocally warmed the planet, and that climate change is now widespread, rapid and intensifying’’, fuelling extreme weather events, flooding, heatwaves, drought and escalation of extinction of species. It is additionally mystifying given that when COVID-19 appeared across the globe in 2019 many countries, including our own, mobilised and co-operated to address the crisis.

Gregory Bateson, whose thinking informed systemic family therapy may have an explanation. In 1979 in the book “Mind and Nature he wrote “Perception operates only upon difference. All receipt of information is necessarily the receipt of news of difference, and all perception of difference is limited by threshold. Differences that are too slight or too slowly presented are not perceivable. They are not food for perception.”  He illustrated this concept by saying “There is a quasi-scientific fable that if you can get a frog to sit quietly in a saucepan of cold water, and if you then raise the temperature of the water very slowly and smoothly so that there is no moment marked to be the moment at which the frog should jump, he will never jump. He will get boiled. Is the human species changing its own environment with slowly increasing pollution and rotting itsv mind with slowly deteriorating religion and education in such a saucepan?” The challenge of ‘making a difference that makes a difference’ has been central to family therapy and has informed questioning, task setting, opinions and advice across disparate schools. At Bower Place central to all therapeutic work is the noticing of small changes that are then highlighted and amplified to create information about difference. However, to understand we must also appreciate that Bateson spoke of the restraint inherent in living systems that maintains their integrity and limits the capacity for information to make a difference. Without addressing these it is unlikely that change will occur. As our leaders gather in Glasgow, we can only hope that some of those constraints have been loosened.

Bateson, G. (1979) Mind and Nature Bantam New Age Books

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